Friday, August 01, 2008

Later this month Goodman Games should be rolling out Points of Light by Robert Conley (a.k.a. estar on some boards). I'm looking forward to this book for a number of reasons. Rob is a talented and cool guy and Goodman Games is one of my favorite publishers nowadays, so this is the sort of thing I'd probably buy on general principle. More importantly, Points of Light is a modern design (complete with slick production values) of the classic Wilderlands-esque sandbox style of campaign presentation. With four different mapped and stocked settings, no less! And it's systemless, so you can use it for your shiny new 4e or OD&D, anything in between, or some other fantasy system of your choice.

The other day I was telling a fellow fan of the old school gaming scene that I was working on running some old school demos at Armored Gopher Games, my friendly local game store. Demos are supposed to be good for the store, right? They're supposed to get players enthused about a game that they will then presumably buy from the FLGS. The problem being is that as I type this, I know of only two games that I consider old school that are in distribution. Those would be Castles & Crusades and Labyrinth Lord. (I would count Hackmaster as well, but the supply seems to have largely dried up until the new edition is published.) Now, I have nothing against either of those games and I have no objection to promoting them. But those two games are a terribly small slice of the entire old school pie. With Points of Light taking the field, I could pick any crusty old fantasy game or new-fangled clone and still have something that the dudes at the Armored Gopher can sell.

"Man, is there anything Jeff CAN'T do when it comes to gaming? This guy is like a critical 20 every roll. Jeff can bite the heads offa five game geeks, including their sorry-ass DM, and spit 'em into a large duffel bag ONE AT A TIME!...that's just the kind of messed up bastard he is! You think yer a gamer, punk? Well..do ya? Jeff will depants your weasel-ass right in front of your grandma."